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I ordered a new cell phone this week. It should be arriving at the office today.

The time has arrived to retire the Blackberry I have used for seven years. In a time where people stand in line days ahead of the next iPhone release, I shrug. The phone is for work. I don’t own a personal cell phone. I see no need. The latest smartphone, tablet, or iPhone simply does not excite me.

There’s an app for quickly locating the nearest pizza shop? So what? I have lived in this area more than 20 years. I know where I want to get pizza. An app to track my exercise, steps, heart rate? No thanks. I don’t need to quantify my guilt.

Twitter? Not on it. I know people who cannot make a witty statement in four hours, let alone within 140 characters. I have absolutely no interest in the Kardashians, their opinions, or latest gossip.

GPS? I have one. It has no subscription fees, does not charge me for data updates, or for using it. Why would I want to run up data usage on my phone for this?

The latest cat video? Don’t care. As I posted elsewhere, I grew up on a farm. Cats are disposable. Just like my Blackberry. Toss it in the box with the rest of the junk from today. Some time in the future they may open the capsule and wonder at our primitive culture.

What would you put in this year’s time capsule to channel the essence of our current moment for future generations?

Today’s old standby prompt is to write for 10 minutes. Anything goes. “Give us your most unfiltered self.” Okay.

Cats are disposable. I realize the internet is teeming with almost as many photos and videos of cats as there are strays in this world. Who knew those prolific creatures would replicate in cyberspace as well? My delete button cannot keep up.

I grew up on a dairy farm. Cats were plentiful. If we didn’t have enough, some nice people from town would drop off their excess kittens near us (when nobody was looking). With so many around, and there being four pre-teen/teenage boys in the mix, sensitivity towards cats was lacking.

Sure, we had our favorites. They were granted house access where they could trip us, claw furniture, pee on the Christmas tree, chew power cords and speaker wires, and generally make a mess of things. Still, we loved some and tolerated more.

Part of having so many cats became the creativity in naming them all. We were a verbal bunch and had a tendency to make obvious naming choices. We would select a physical attribute and tie a name to the animal. Such as:

Bigfoot – A large male with extra toes on his front paws

Fish – A female stray (dropped off by some nice city folks we think) with stripes that looked a bit like fish scales

Goldfish – A son of Fish. Yellow tabby.

Stubby – An all black kitten who had the misfortune to get his tail stepped on by the horse. It broke about one inch from the base. The tail hung on for a few days looking like a broken antenna until it finally dropped away.

Pancake – Noticed when one of the dairy cows got up. Kitty hadn’t been quick enough when the cow went down. Nothing left to do but get a shovel… 🙁

Caterpillar – A long haired calico that did not remotely look like any caterpillar ever seen.

Speedy – Not truly a fast mover. A female very popular with the tomcats. She would stop for any of them. We lost count of how many litters she had.

I could go on but the timer is about to run out. Overall, I believe I restrained myself well in the time allotted.

🙂

Our ten-minute free-write is back! Have no mercy on your keyboard as you give us your most unfiltered self (feel free to edit later, or just publish as-is).